The Keep

by F. Paul Wilson

  Completing the fifth and final pace, he turned left and, in so doing, lost his balance. His left hand—the one with the flashlight—shot out reflexively to keep him from falling and came in contact with something furry that squealed and moved and bit with razor-sharp teeth. Pain knifed up his arm from the heel of his palm. He snatched his hand away and clamped his teeth on his lower lip until the pain subsided. It didn’t take long, and he had managed to hold on to the flashlight.

  The scraping noises sounded much louder now, and directly ahead. Yet there was no light. No matter how he strained his eyes, he could see nothing. He began to perspire as fear reached deep into his intestines and squeezed. There had to be light somewhere ahead.

  He took one pace—not so long as the previous ones—and stopped. The sounds now came from directly in front of him, ahead…and down…scraping, scratching, scrabbling.

  Another pace.

  Whatever the sounds were, they gave him the impression of concerted effort, yet he could hear no labored breathing accompanying them. Only his own ragged respirations and the sound of his blood pounding in his ears. That and the scratching.

  One more pace and he would turn the light on again. He lifted his foot but found he could not move himself forward. Of its own volition, his body refused to take another step until he could see where he was going.

  Woermann stood trembling. He wanted to go back. He didn’t want to see what was ahead. Nothing sane or of this world could move and exist in this blackness. Better not to know.

  But the bodies…he had to know.

  He made a sound that was almost a whimper and flicked the switch on the flashlight. It took a moment for his pupils to constrict in the sudden glare, and a much longer moment for his mind to register the horror of what the light revealed.

  And then Woermann screamed…an agonized sound that started low and built in volume and pitch, echoing and re-echoing around him as he turned and fled back the way he had come. He rushed headlong past the staring rats and beyond. With perhaps thirty more feet of tunnel to go, Woermann brought himself to a wavering halt.

  There was someone up ahead.

  He flashed his beam at the figure blocking his path. He saw the waxy face, the cape, the clothes, the lank hair, the twin pools of madness where the eyes should be. And he knew. Here was the master of the house.

  Woermann stood and stared in horrified fascination for a moment, then marshaled his quarter-century of military training.

  “Let me pass!” he said and directed the beam onto the cross in his right hand, confident that he held an effective weapon. “In the name of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, in the name of all that is holy, let me pass!”

  Instead of retreating, the figure moved forward, closer to Woermann, close enough so that the light picked up his sallow features. He was smiling—a gloating vulpine grimace that weakened Woermann’s knees and made his upheld hands shake violently.

  His eyes…oh, God, his eyes…

  Woermann stood rooted to the spot, unable to retreat because of what he had seen behind him, and blocked from escape ahead. He kept the quaking light trained on the silver cross—the cross! Vampires fear the cross!—as he thrust it forward, fighting fear as he had never known it.

  Dear God, if you are my God, don’t desert me!

  Unseen, a hand slipped through the dark and snatched the cross from Woermann’s grasp. The creature held it between his thumb and forefinger and let Woermann watch in horror and dismay as he began to bend it, folding it until it was doubled over on itself. Then he bent the crosspiece down until all that was left was a misshapen lump of silver. This he flipped away with no more thought than a soldier on leave would give to a cigarette butt.

  Woermann shouted in terror as he saw the same hand dart toward him. He ducked away, but he was not quick enough.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Magda drifted slowly back to consciousness, drawn by rough prodding at her clothing and by a painful pressure in her right hand. She opened her eyes. The stars were out. A shadow loomed over her, pulling and pulling at her hand.

  Where was she? And why did her head hurt so? Images flashed through her mind—Glenn…the causeway…gunfire…the gorge…

  Glenn was dead! It hadn’t been a dream—Glenn was dead!

  With a groan she sat up, causing whoever was pulling at her to scream in terror and run back toward the village. When the vertigo that rocked and spun the world about her subsided, she lifted her hand to the tender, swollen area near her right temple and winced in pain when she touched it.

  She also became aware of a throbbing in her right ring finger. The flesh around her mother’s wedding band was cut and swollen. Whoever had been leaning over her must have been trying to pull it off her finger. One of the villagers! He had probably thought her dead and had been terrified when she had moved.

  Magda rose to her feet and again the world began to spin and tilt. When the ground had steadied, when her nausea faded away and the roaring in her ears dimmed to a steady thrum, she began to walk. Every step she took caused a stab of pain in her head but she kept going, crossing to the far side of the path and pushing into the brush. A half moon drifted in a cloud-streaked sky. It hadn’t been out before. How long had she been unconscious? She had to get to Glenn!

  He’s still alive, she told herself. He has to be!

  It was the only way she could imagine him. Yet how could he live? How could anyone survive all those bullets…and that fall into the gorge?

  Magda began to sob, as much for Glenn as for her own overwhelming sense of loss. She despised herself for that selfishness, yet it would not be denied. Thoughts of all the things they would never do together rushed in on her. After thirty-one years she finally had found a man she could love. She had spent one full day at his side, a sublime twenty-four hours immersing herself in the true magnificence of life, only to have him torn from her and brutally murdered.

  It’s not fair!

  She came to the rubble fall at the end of the gorge and paused to glare across the rising mist that filled it. Could you hate a stone building? She hated the keep. It held nothing but evil. Had she possessed the power she would have willed it to tumble into Hell, taking everyone inside—yes! Even Papa—with it.

  But the keep floated, silent and implacable on its sea of fog, lit from within, dark and glowering without, ignoring her.

  She prepared to descend into the gorge as she had two nights ago. Two nights…it seemed like an age. The fog had reached the rim, making the descent even more dangerous. It was insane to risk her life trying to find Glenn’s body in the dark down there. But her life did not matter as much now as it had a few hours ago. She had to find him…had to touch his wounds, feel his still heart and cold skin. She had to know for certain he was beyond all help. There would be no rest for her until then.

  As she began to swing her legs over the edge she heard some pebbles slide and bounce down the slope beneath her. At first she thought her weight had dislodged a clump of dirt from the edge. But an instant later she heard it again. She stopped and listened. Another sound—labored breathing. Someone was climbing up through the fog!

  Frightened, Magda backed away from the edge and waited in the brush, ready to run. She held her breath as she saw a hand rise out of the fog and claw the soft earth at the gorge’s rim, followed by another hand, followed by a head. Magda instantly recognized the shape of that head.

  “Glenn!”

  He did not seem to hear, but continued struggling to pull himself over the edge. Magda ran to him. Gripping him under both arms and calling on reserves of strength she never knew she possessed, she pulled him up onto level ground where he lay facedown, panting and groaning. She knelt over him, helpless and confused.

  “Oh, Glenn, you’re”—her hands were wet and glistened darkly in the moonlight—“bleeding!” It was inane, it was obvious, it was expected, but it was all she could say at the moment.

  You should be dead! she thought, but held back the words. If
she didn’t say it, maybe it wouldn’t happen. But his clothing was soaked with blood oozing from dozens of mortal wounds. That he was still breathing was a miracle. That he had managed to pull himself out of the gorge was beyond belief! Yet here he was, prostrate before her…alive. If he had lasted this long, perhaps…

  “I’ll get a doctor!” Another stupid remark—a reflex. There was no doctor anywhere in the Dinu Pass. “I’ll get Iuliu and Lidia! They’ll help me get you back to the—”

  Glenn mumbled something, Magda bent over him, touching her ear to his lips.

  “Go to my room,” he said in a weak, dry, tortured voice.

  The odor of blood was fresh on his breath. He’s bleeding inside!

  “I’ll take you there as soon as I get Iuliu.” But would Iuliu help?

  His fingers plucked at her sleeve. “Listen to me! Get the case…you saw it yesterday…the one with the blade in it.”

  “That’s not going to help you now! You need medical care!”

  “You must! Nothing else can save me!”

  She straightened, hesitated a moment, then jumped to her feet and ran. Her head started pounding again but now she found it easy to ignore the pain. Glenn wanted that sword blade. It didn’t make sense, but his voice had been so full of conviction…urgency…need. She had to get it for him.

  Magda did not slacken her pace as she entered the inn, taking the stairs up to the second floor two at a time, slowing only when she entered the darkness of Glenn’s room. She felt her way to the closet and lifted the case. With a high-pitched creak it fell open—she hadn’t closed the catches when Glenn had surprised her here yesterday! The blade slipped out of the case and fell against the mirror with a crash. The glass shattered and cascaded onto the floor. Magda bent and quickly replaced the blade in its case, found the catches, closed them, then lifted the case into her arms, groaning under its unexpected weight. As she turned to leave, she pulled the blanket from the bed, then hurried across to her room for a second blanket.

  Iuliu and Lidia, alerted by the commotion she was making on the second floor, stood with startled expressions at the foot of the stairs as she descended.

  “Don’t you dare try to stop me!” Magda said as she rushed by.

  Something in her voice must have warned them away, for they stepped aside and let her pass.

  She stumbled back through the brush, the case and the blankets weighing her down, snagging on the branches, slowing her as she rushed toward Glenn, praying he was still alive. She found him lying on his back, weaker, his voice fainter.

  “The blade,” he whispered as she leaned over him. “Take it out of the case.”

  For an awful moment Magda feared he would ask for a coup de grâce. She would do anything for Glenn—anything but that. But would a man with his injuries make so desperate a climb out of the gorge just to ask for death? She opened the case. Two large pieces of the shattered mirror lay within. She brushed them aside and lifted the dark, cold blade with both her hands, feeling the shape of the runes carved in its surface press against her palms.

  She passed it to his outstretched arms and almost dropped it when a faint blue glow, blue like a gas flame, leaped along its edges at his touch. As she released it to him, he sighed; his features relaxed, losing their pain, a look of contentment settling on them…the look of a man who has come home to a warm and familiar room after a long, arduous winter journey.

  Glenn positioned the blade along the length of his battered, punctured, blood-soaked body, the point resting a few inches short of his ankles, the spike of the butt where the missing hilt should be almost to his chin. Folding his arms over the blade and across his chest, he closed his eyes.

  “You shouldn’t stay here,” he said in a faint, slurred voice. “Come back later.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  He made no reply. His breathing became shallower and steadier. He appeared to be asleep. Magda watched him closely. The blue glow spread to his forearms, sheathing them in a faint patina of light. She covered him with a blanket, as much for warmth as to hide the glow from the keep. Then she moved away, wrapped the second blanket around her shoulders, and seated herself with her back against a rock. Myriad questions, held at bay until now, rushed in on her.

  Who was he, really? What manner of man was this who suffered wounds enough to kill him many times over and then climbed a slope that would tax a strong man in perfect health? What manner of man hid his room’s mirror in a closet along with an ancient sword with no hilt—who now clasped that sword to his breast as he lay on the borderland of death? How could she entrust her love and her life to such a man? She knew nothing about him.

  Then Papa’s ranting came back to her: He belongs to a group that directs the Nazis, that is using them for its own foul ends! He’s worse than a Nazi!

  Could Papa be right? Could she be so blinded by her infatuation that she could not or would not see this? Glenn certainly was no ordinary man. And he did have secrets—he had been far from open with her. Was it possible that Glenn was the enemy and Molasar the ally?

  She drew the blanket closer around her. All she could do was wait.

  Magda’s eyelids began to droop—the aftereffects of the concussion and the rhythmic sounds of Glenn’s breathing lulled her. She struggled briefly, then succumbed…just for a moment…just to rest her eyes.

  Klaus Woermann knew he was dead. And yet…not dead.

  He clearly remembered his dying. He had been strangled with deliberate slowness here in the subcellar in darkness lit only by the feeble glow of his fallen flashlight. Icy fingers with incalculable strength had closed on his throat, choking off the air until his blood had thundered in his ears and blackness had closed in.

  But not eternal blackness. Not yet.

  He could not understand his continued awareness. He lay on his back, his eyes open and staring into the darkness. He did not know how long he had been this way. Time had lost all meaning. Except for his vision, he was cut off from the rest of his body. It was as if it belonged to someone else. He could feel nothing, not the rocky earth against his back or the cold air against his face. He could hear nothing. He was not breathing. He could not move—not even a finger. When a rat had crawled over his face, dragging its matted fur across his eyes, he could not even blink.

  He was dead. And yet not dead.

  Gone was all fear, all pain. He was devoid of all feeling except regret. He had ventured into the subcellar to find redemption and had found only horror and death—his own death.

  Woermann suddenly realized that he was being moved. Although he could still feel nothing, he sensed he was being dragged through the darkness by the back of his tunic, along a narrow passage, into a dark room—

  —and into light.

  Woermann’s line of vision was along the limp length of his body. As he was dragged along a corridor strewn with granite rubble, his gaze swept across a wall he immediately recognized—a wall upon which words of an ancient tongue had been written in blood. The wall had been washed but brown smudges were still visible on the stone.

  He was dropped to the floor. His field of vision was now limited to a section of the partially dismantled ceiling directly above him. At the periphery of his vision, moving about, was a dark shape. Woermann saw a length of heavy rope snake over an exposed ceiling beam, saw a loop of that same rope go over his face, and then he was moving again…

  …upward…

  …until his feet left the ground and his lifeless body began to sway and swing and twist in the air. A shadowy figure melted into a doorway down the corridor and Woermann was alone, hanging by his neck from a rope.

  He wanted to scream a protest to God. For he now knew that the dark being who ruled the keep was waging war not only against the bodies of the soldiers who had entered his domain, but against their minds and their spirits as well.

  And Woermann realized the role he was being forced to play in that war: a suicide. His men would think he had killed himself! It would completel
y demoralize them. Their officer, the man they looked to for leadership, had hanged himself—the ultimate cowardice, the ultimate desertion.

  He could not allow that to happen. And yet he could do nothing to alter the course of events. He was dead.

  Was this to be his penance for closing his eyes to the monstrousness of the war? If so, it was too much to pay! To hang here and watch his own men and the einsatzkommandos come and gawk at him. And the final ignominy: to see Erich Kaempffer smiling up at him.

  Was this why he had been left teetering on the edge of eternal oblivion? To witness his own humiliation as a suicide?

  If only he could do something!

  One final act to redeem his pride and—yes—his manhood. One last gesture to give meaning to his death.

  Something!

  Anything!

  But all he could do was hang and sway and wait to be found.

  Cuza looked up as a grating sound filled the room. The section of the wall that led into the base of the tower was swinging open. When it stopped moving, Molasar’s voice came from the darkness beyond.

  “All is ready.”

  At last!

  The wait had been almost unbearable. As the hours had edged by, Cuza had almost given up on seeing Molasar again tonight. Never had he been a patient man, but at no time could he remember being so consumed by an urgency such as he had known tonight. He had tried to distract himself by dredging up worries about how Magda was faring after that blow to the head…but it was no use. The coming destruction of “Lord Hitler” banished all other considerations from his mind. Cuza had paced the length, breadth, and perimeters of both rooms again and again, obsessed by his fierce longing to get on with it and yet unable to do a thing until word came from Molasar.

  And now Molasar was here. As Cuza ducked through the opening, leaving his wheelchair behind forever, he felt a cold metal cylinder pressed against the bare skin of his palm.